Why?
by shadoewhunter
Summary: Snape's introspective questioning of life and his past. Childhood story.


**For the sea is deep and I have touched the sky**

My oldest memories are of the salty sea and rain heavy skies. I remember rainwater beating down on the ocean waves and splattering on the dark sand. I remember wet sand beneath my feet and the salty tang of ocean water like tears of someone crying for the world in my mouth as the water splashed up onto the shore. My mother was a small woman who never had much to say. I don't quite remember why we were there. I was only a small child, but even child can sense tension. I think it had something to do with my father leaving for business. It was my first time at the sea, with the rain and sea swirling, meeting, locked in a beautiful harmony.

I remember my mother holding me tightly in her arms as I came running up, laughing, from the blind joyful abandon of being at the beach in the rain.

"My baby boy," she whispered to me.

"One day, one day I hope you will realize how deep the sea is, how complex human kind is. How strange and bittersweet love is." I hadn't understood, just stood there and looked up at her, holding me tight. She didn't offer an explanation of her words, just gazed at me with those helpless eyes of her. I couldn't tell you now if the tears that ran down her face were from the sky or her heart.

"One day, I hope you learn how to touch the sky". 

My mother died two days later, merely one day after my father returned.

I don't know what happened. My father had not been happy again when he'd come back, as he often was for one reason or another and before I'd gone to sleep there'd been screams and shouts outside.

I woke up the next morning to the cold room I slept in. Being hungry, I wandered out quietly to see if there was something I could eat. After I stepped into the kitchen I froze at the unfamiliar sight of my father sitting at the stark plain table, alone. He was filling out paperwork of some kind. An unfamiliar dark colored horn owl glared at me menacingly as it paraded around awkwardly on the table.

"Your mother is dead." He muttered, not even bothering to look up as he continued to write. I looked at him with big eyes, stunned and not quite understanding in my 6-year-old brain the exact meaning of his words.

"Dead?" I asked. He stopped and looked up at me with his squinty eyes, greasy mangy black hair in short clumps bordering his face. He had a blank emotionless expression on his face.

"She fell and hit her head, boy."

I didn't say anything, just starred at him. Starred at the man that was the reason for my existence and the root of all that I viewed to be evil and bad in this world. All the hurt, the beatings, the words of viciousness and cruelty seeped into my mind. My mother had always been the fragile wall against him. Now she was gone. My father sat here, with an attitude of boredom filling out paperwork and my mother was gone.

"You killed her." My voice came out in a husky whisper as my hands gripped themselves into little fists. His head shot up, eyes with a strange gleam in them that had not been there before, teeth clenched.

"What?"

"You killed her! You killed my mother!" Before I could even move a centimeter, my father's large hand hit me with enough force to knock me to the wall a good six feet away. He was half out of his chair, breathing hard with anger.

"Don't you—ever—say---that again." He strode, grabbed my shirt and yanked me up to his face as he hissed these words. Then he backhanded me and I fell silently down to the ground, head spinning, and ears ringing. He hit me again and then kicked me in the abdomen. I was whimpering on that floor, my hands on the side of my head, blood trickling down out of my ear. The owl on the table continued to glare at me, as if daring me to say anything more.

"Stupid boy." He sneered at me, black eyes hard. Snarling, he spun and stalked off. The only that saved me that day was his blood running through my veins. Even now, I would have burned in the highest level of Hell to not have his blood in me.

"We never had a funeral, he didn't deem it a financial necessity. So my mother was cremated and my father dumped the ashes out of the little black jar it came in the next time he went out flying.

I didn't speak much to him anymore, but I let my anger come out in my work. My neighbor's kids stopped playing with me and I could care less. My father was often gone from the house and so I read and studied his books from an early age, trying to make sense of what was wrong with me and my life.

I use to love to read. There were a couple of Muggle fairy tales in a book on the back shelf of what use to be my mother's study. When I took it out, I saw the picture of an imaginary happy family, a mother, father, and little girl, sitting around a fireplace, as cozy and as sweet as you please.

I would often stare at the cover along time before tucking it back under my bed in my room. My father never came in there, and he was too self-conscious to ever go snooping around. Besides, he wouldn't realize it was gone for he had long since ceased to read.

One weekend when he was gone again for some business trip, I took the long two-hour walk to the ocean once again. For some reason it seemed a lot longer and lonelier than before. No one was there in the early foggy morning and I was given my privacy. With as hard of a throw as possible, I heaved the fairy tale book out into the sea, the book flying and tumbling through the air. I turned around quickly and ran as hard as I could because I didn't want to see if the book would bob up hopefully from the waves. Starring around me as I slowed to a tired jog in the fog and dark shadowed dawn, I sat down in the cold moist sand and began to cry. The sea is very deep, deep enough to swallow hopes and dreams, swallow ambition and swallow the simplistic need for love.

All I had ever wanted to know was why.

* * *

Author's Note:

Thax for reading! Yea, this was a bit of rambling that came to me at school one day. I planned for it to be a four part story and this is suppose to be part one. But if it doesn't get any good reviews, I don't know if I'm going to waste time on it though. Mmm…what do you think? Should I keep writing? Please review and tell me what's good & bad. Thax


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